In 1998, the year of a Portuguese referendum debate on abortion, Paula Rego poured her fierce, formidable passion into 10 large paintings set in backstreet abortion clinics. These were a direct gesture of protest at the cruelty of anti-abortion laws. Focused on individual women positioned on single beds in improvised operating theatres, the paintings of the Abortion series are so dark and claustrophobic that you can almost feel the heat and stickiness, and smell the adrenal sweat.
Rego pulls the focus of the abortion debate back to the woman’s experience. There is no blood, no gore, no biological nastiness to see here: this is all about feeling, both physical and psychological. First-hand discussion of abortion remains taboo even 24 years later – Rego’s works carry us into the heart of this unseen, unspoken terrain.
